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Business View Caribbean
52 September 2015 - Business View Caribbean
Guaico, Sangre Grande, and the 118-acre, Verdant
Vale blue limestone quarry in Blanchisseuse. It has
a total of eight active pits and four wash plants. The
mined aggregate is transported by truck to the wash
plants where it is washed, screened, sized, and pro-
cessed. The company’s employee base fluctuates be-
tween 150 and 250 workers.
All of National Quarries products are used domesti-
cally, as are all the aggregates from all of the country’s
other open-pit quarries. “Our customer base is wide-
ranging and very diverse,” says Cook, “from the aver-
age person who is just seeking to get a few yards of
gravel to undertake repairs of their home to larger, es-
tablished organizations and companies, such as block
manufacturers and contractors. [We’re also here] to
satisfy large-scale projects, some of which may be gov-
ernment projects.”
One of the biggest construction projects going on in
Trinidad right now, and one which Cook suggests that
“everything is going to,” is the construction of the Solo-
mon Hochoy Highway extension from San Fernando in
south Trinidad to Point Fortin by way of the southern
towns of Debe, Penal, Siparia, Fyzabad, and La Brea.
This four-lane, 30-mile carriageway is the largest and
most complex infrastructure development that has
ever been carried out in Trinidad and Tobago. Cook
concurs: “It’s a massive undertaking – ten interchang-
es, five overpasses, six underpasses, ten bridges, 58
